Wednesday Morning, 3 am
by ladyoftheknightley
Summary: 'For I know in the first light of dawn I'll be leaving, and tonight will be all I have left to recall.' On the night before a full moon, Remus lies awake and ponders the baby he and his wife will soon be having. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: **The characters, events and settings are all copyright JK Rowling; the song title and lyrics are property of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. No profit is being made from this; it is for entertainment purposes only.

**A/N: **For the rhythmic gymnastics contest as part of the 2012 Hogwarts Games, and the romance slice of the Chinese Moon Festival Competition. My first songfic and my first Remus/Tonks! I'd love to know what you think of this, please leave a review at the end.

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_I can hear the soft breathing of the girl that I love,  
As she lies here beside me asleep with the night,  
And her hair, in a fine mist floats on my pillow,  
Reflecting the glow of the winter moonlight._

She had absentmindedly forgotten to close the left curtain, and the November moonlight was streaming into our bedroom, illuminating her body as she slept in the bed next to me. It was the night before the full moon, which always left me unable to sleep. My whole body ached; I was alternately too hot and then too cold; I felt tense and feverish and old, so old. I had spent most of the night tossing and turning, but I just couldn't get comfortable and I hadn't slept a wink even though it was now the early hours of the morning.

Beside me, my wife was sleeping peacefully, having fallen asleep at around half past eleven. I'd watched as her eyes closed, and then as her breathing became slower and softer. It was a soothing sound and worked better to calm me than any of the potions I had to take for my condition.

I hated that phrase so much, had told her so at some point. I'd mentioned, too, that James used to call it my "furry little problem", and she'd adopted that moniker immediately.

"Calling it your "condition" makes you sound like you're pregnant!" she'd laughed, and I'd chuckled in response, for this had been back when pregnancy was something that happened to other, normal people – not people with dangerous illnesses in the middle of a war.

_She is soft, she is warm, but my heart remains heavy,  
And I watch as her breasts gently rise, gently fall,  
For I know with the first light of dawn I'll be leaving,  
And tonight will be all I have left to recall._

I'd never really been around a pregnant woman before, so I didn't know what to expect. Sure, there'd been Lily, but that was nearly eighteen years ago, and besides, with the war on, I'd had other things on my mind than watching her body change as the baby grew. And when Lily was pregnant, I hadn't been living with her, sharing a house all the time. When you watch someone day to day, changes are more noticeable – and I was noticing every little thing that changed with Nymphadora.

Her stomach was beginning to protrude a little, and her breasts had become slightly bigger – but unless you _knew_ she was pregnant, you wouldn't notice that. She was—there was no other word for it—_glowing_, and that had given some people cause to comment – not that we saw many people these days. Fred (or was it George? Even after teaching the pair of them, I struggled to tell the two apart) had seen her for the first time in several months a few days ago, and you could see his face light up like a _Lumos_ charm when she told him that she was pregnant.

"It explains why you're looking so healthy and smiley," he'd said. "I _knew_ there was something different about you – you just looked so happy! I thought maybe you'd had news that You-Know-Who had been wiped out and you were holding out on us all!"

She'd laughed, and told him that his mother had known within thirty seconds of seeing her that she was pregnant. "I've done this six times, you know," Molly had said with a smile at my taken aback look. Mad-Eye would've known too, I think. _Nothing _got past that man. You could eat cereal for breakfast every day for a year, then one day decide you were going to have toast, and he'd be able to tell you'd changed your eating habits.

Bill had known for the same reason I did – he could smell Dora. Of course, her scent wasn't as strong for him as it was for me (a combination, I think, of she being my lover and this my baby, and the fact that I was an actual werewolf, whereas he is not), but it was still there. And it was _strong_. She'd said that she thought she could smell things more strongly, now she was pregnant, but it was _nothing_ to the smell of her to me.

It was not normally a problem (in fact, it was something of a bonus, to tell the truth...), but I had to leave the house – or send her to her mother's – on the day of the full moon. The smell was too much for the wolf inside me, and I had to leave her or risk hurting her or the baby. I was pushing it, to be honest, by risking staying with her, sleeping next to her, on the night before my transformation, but I couldn't resist. Watching her sleep was peaceful and I loved having these memories to think of during my lonely transformations.

If I could no longer have James, Sirius and Peter (oh, Peter...) with me, I would make do with the image of her in my mind, her smell in my nose, the sound her voice makes in my ears... It would get me through.

_Oh, what have I done,__why have I done it?__  
I've committed a crime,__I've broken the law.__  
For twenty-five dollars__and pieces of silver,__  
I held up and robbed__a hard liquor store._

Of course, I was lucky that last time I left her she took me back at all. I ran, scared of the implications that the baby brought with it. Oh, not scared that the child would be a werewolf, nor indeed scared that being seen to be pregnant with a werewolf's child, Dora would be shunned by society (not that 'society' really exists these days, with all the terror surrounding the war). No, I was scared because I thought the baby would resent me when he grew up.

For who wants a werewolf for a father? Even if the best happens, and we win the war tomorrow, the werewolves will still be punished—if they can even be caught—for their actions in it, and there will be no sympathy from even the most mild mannered or liberal of those of us on the light side. What sympathy would the Weasleys want to show the man who nearly killed their oldest son? What sympathy would Maggie Hensworth, the fairest and brightest Healer in St. Mungos' by all accounts, want to give the werewolf who snuffed out the life of her five year old daughter? These people are not bigots, nor do they hold with the old prejudices. But they would not want to give a werewolf anything other than a life sentence in Azkaban.

I do not blame them, but I cannot help but imagine what this child will think of his or her father. He or she will surely resent me for what I am – because what I am will taint what they are. Whatever their achievements in life, they will forever be 'that child of that werewolf'. I thought perhaps it would be better for them if I was to die a noble death, fighting against the Death Eaters – it's why I went to Harry and the others and asked to join them. If I could protect them _and_ give my child something to love about me in one fell swoop? It was almost too convenient.

Harry made me see the flaws in that plan almost immediately, but it was the look in Dora's face when I confessed this that made me see how truly idiotic it would be. She was utterly heartbroken. "And if I said that the child would be better off with me dead, how would you feel?!"

I could barely imagine such a thing.

"I thought you were many things, Remus John Lupin, but I never thought you were a coward and a bad man," she said, turning away from me.

There is no quick fix for us, but I am forever grateful for her for taking me back so I at least have the opportunity to try again.

_My life seems unreal, my crime an illusion,__  
A scene badly written__ i__n which I must play.__  
Yet I know as I gaze__ a__t my young love beside me,__  
The morning is just a few hours away._

If someone pointed a wand at Dora, or Merlin forbid, our baby when he or she is born, I wouldn't hesitate to jump in front of it for them, but I would no longer consider sneaking off to die 'honourably' so the baby wouldn't have to live with the burden of a werewolf for a father. And hopefully, it won't come to that. Hopefully, as unlikely as it sometimes feels, the war will end, we will live, and everything will go back to normal. In eleven Septembers' time, I will wave off the baby at King's Cross, as he or she makes its way to Hogwarts for the first time, no longer a baby and halfway to being an adult.

But I still wonder what the child will think of me. Will he or she resent having a werewolf for a father? I don't see how they couldn't. My parents resented my condition, despite being the most wonderful and loving mother and father I could hope to have. I cannot blame them at all – we were shunned by society, and my movements were constantly tracked. It was no life for them to lead.

I won't blame my son or daughter for resenting me.

A sudden shift in the bed drew me out of my musings, and I looked over to see Dora staring up at me. "Can't sleep?" she asked blearily. I nodded.

"It's just the moon," I said. "You know how it is."

She hummed sleepily. "Is there anything I can do?"

What on Earth had I done to deserve her? "Not unless you can stop me thinking..."

"Stop you thinking?" she asked, seeming more awake now. "Why?"

"Oh just...I was thinking about the baby," I replied.

"We get to find out the gender in a few days," Dora said. "It'll be nice to call it a he or a she instead of 'the baby' or 'it', won't it? And we can start to think of names..."

"It's exciting," I said, honestly.

"It is," she agreed, nuzzling into my arm. "I'm excited for us to be a family together."

"Do you think..." I began, but drifted off. She quirked an eyebrow at me. "Do you think that I'll be a good father?"

She smiled. "I was never much cop at Divination, so I can't read the future," she said, "but I believe you will."

It didn't take her long to drift back off to sleep, but her words kept me awake still longer. It still amazed me that this incredible woman had such an unshakeable faith in me, despite my many shortcomings.

Still, the words soothed me.

I knew that tomorrow would be worse than today for the werewolf inside me, but I also knew that I would have something to cling onto, even when I became one of the darkest creatures, and that was hope. Dora, and the child she was growing inside her, gave me hope, and in the end, it was that which sent me into sleep - a more peaceful slumber than I'd had in weeks.


End file.
